It has been a crazy few weeks for me, becoming a father to my fourth daughter, adjusting to career changes, and working on how I am going to keep putting out quality content over the next few months.

Now I am back and will be experimenting with a new routine and content creation cycle. Since I launched varimahenry.com  in April this year, I have been experimenting with different ways and efforts to position Design Sprints in the South African start-up and corporate market place.

Not a UX Designer, a podcast by Varima Henry

The Podcast.

I wanted to share a bit more on the podcast since I have not had a chance to do so. I have just launched episode 3 of the “NOT a UX Designer” podcast, I have gone solo in this episode just to speak to what the podcast is about and what’s in the pipeline.

Now, the podcast is still really crappy and hopes to have things going smoother in the 5th or 6th episode and if you have listened to this one and the previous ones, thank you for tolerating me making you an online Ginnie pig, please share your thoughts and what topics you would like to listen to in the future. (comment below)💬

Why I  😍 Design Sprints.

I am a big evangelist of design sprints and believe that there is no better process to get team alignment and get to market faster, open for discussion. We have all been on a project where it took us forever to understand what is going on and what everyone does.

We have things terms like design thinking, scrum, agile… thrown at us. People with titles like a Product designer, UX/UI Designer, Scrum master… that we do not know what role they play on the project. No way to bring ideas forward and be heard. Teams usually get demotivated and do not bring their best after working on the same idea for more than 6 months without releasing a version or a feature.

Besides demotivated teams, it is no longer viable for teams to and businesses, startups and large corporates to spend more than 12 months without taking a product to market. It is just too long in the forever changing tech landscape even in South Africa.

Design sprints help teams align and understand the problem. Sprints enable a creative problem-solving environment where everyone’s voice is heard and every idea is looked at.

Helps to decide as a team, as to what are the best ideas to prototype and validate with real customers/users in just one week. Without investing time in code or long processes and meaningless conversation and meetings, teams can move from idea to market faster.

#Designsprintsa, Join the Conversation

I am excited to announce the launch of Design Sprint S.A. This is a platform to talk about design sprints in South Africa, opportunities, successes, and learning.

Join the conversation on Facebook and LinkedIn to help drive meaningful conversations and engagement around design sprints and the role they play in the design, UX, Design thinking community in South Africa.

Share your sprint experiences, post questions or answer questions to help the #designsprintsa trend grow in the South African market.

In the Pipeline.

I have been working on a few experiments since I started posting on this website and gathering feedback from the audience, I have been working on streamlining the process of creating content and managing the website updates.

I will be experimenting with different flavors of content and events to share more on design sprints and design thinking. I believe that this will help put out more quality local digital products in the market.

Look out for upcoming online talks (webinars) and the official Design Sprint S.A meet up in Johannesburg South Africa that I will be hosting in the next coming month or so.  I will be sharing more information about upcoming events and content on social media so follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Medium.